Do you spend your day being busy or productive in the salon?
What is the difference between being Busy and being Productive? To me, being busy is what fills most of my time, especially at work. To me, being productive is the work that I know is going to make my end goal get closer. Sure, I guess in a round about way, being both busy and being productive could be moving me closer to the end goal… but isn’t being busy kind of just letting the day’s circumstances control your schedule/behavior?
Hear me out, if I am a salon owner and each day I get to my salon with absolutely no agenda planned but just to ‘do what the salon needs me to do..’ I for sure will spend my day answering the phone, cleaning the back bar, running to the supply store to grab something we ran out of, helping blow dry for a stylist that is running behind ..and the list goes on. Every salon owner has these days, wears this ‘hat’ but if every day is like this then your salon business will barely survive. Salon owners need systems inside of their business just like blondes need a toner (it’s a non-negotiable). Having a system behind every thing you do in your business more than once is necessary for you to scale and evolve. What?? did I really mean everything you do in your business more than once… YES. I did. So how do you move from being busy to being productive?
Here are a few things I did in the beginning of my career as a Stylist ..
create a solid system around my consultation. I wanted to create as much ease and automation to this part of my appointment. This meant I came up with specific questions around my service menu, client lifestyle, and maintenance. This is something I tried to evolve and take deeper each year with every guest (not just new ones). As social media has evolved, its so easy to incorporate ‘boards’ to help start deeper conversations behind your questions to connect better with your guest. Having a very deep, very clear consultation helped me identify sooner what route I needed to take as a professional to achieve the goal that the client and I came up with. Having this as a solid system in your business will 100% save you time and make your ‘busy’ a LOT more Productive when you are retaining your guests and doing the services you feel confident with.
don’t hang out in the break room. Of course, I went to the break room as a young stylist, but I didn’t let it suck me in…. I would put little notes on my schedule to help keep me focused on my business early on in my career! So if I ever had processing time, finished early, or had a client cancel I always had a back up plan for my ‘down time’ so that I was still working productively! These things would include: social media content, record a ‘how to’ video, write thank you cards to last week’s guests (I always included an incentive for them to come back too!) and not my favorite way to spend downtime, but I still chose it over chatting was working on my doll head. Hear me out, we are in an industry where the more we do the better we become, so I was willing to work on my muscle memory with fake clients just so when I had a real one I would be even more confident with that new technique I had been wanting to add to my belt was.
visualize my day. I would start by writing out each of my guests and their services, I would add that up… then I would set a goal to go above and beyond what I could see on that paper. That meant, I was going to deliver one or more services with an extra intention of serving my guest deeper… often times that meant listening to their hair story and suggesting to ‘solve’ it for them. I could show them exactly how I would style it, what I would use; I could give them a salon treatment to combat or enhance their natural texture. This created the most retention in my books than anything else I ever did! It wasn’t about selling, it was about helping my guest have a different experience than what both of us anticipated.
I hope that you can fine something helpful to implement in your behind the chair business today! If you’d ever like to talk about how you can be more productive with your time as a stylist or salon owner please reach out. I love connecting with other professionals that are always looking for ways to stay inspired and productive by the work that keeps us busy!
By Danielle Nishiyama
https://daniellenishiyama.com/teachers
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